ANTW is a weblog maintained by the Amsterdam Centre for New Testament Studies (ACNTS). Contributors are the staff of the New Testament department of the Faculty of Theology at VU University Amsterdam. Interests of the weblog include Biblical Exegesis and Theology, Textual Criticism and Bible Software.

Arie W. Zwiep, “Between Text and Margin: Some Comments on the Outer Marginal Annotations of Nestle-Aland 28 at Acts 2:1-4”

The inner and outer margins of the Novum Testamentum Graece (‘Nestle-Aland’) often seem to escape critical attention by its users. Especially the criteria for in- and exclusion of textual references have not been very specific in earlier editions. In Nestle-Aland 28, published in 2012, the criteria have been established anew and the textual references in the outer margins revised accordingly. A comparison of the 27th and 28th editions of Nestle-Aland reveals a number of changes, omissions, additions, new insights and so on. In this article, the textual references in the outer margins of NA28 of Acts 2:1-4 are compared with those in earlier editions, analysed and evaluated. Conclusions are drawn with regard to its usefulness and a few suggestions made for future revisions.

Friday, September 05, 2014

Tischendorf’s best known edition is his “editio octava critica maior”, his “eighth edition”, this time both “critical” and “maior”. But why is it called the eighth? It turns out Tischendorf numbered his editions in a slightly confusing way. For instance, in 1859 all of a sudden he called his new edition the seventh, even if there is no edition that on its title page states that it is the sixth. Moreover there seems to be a sort of numbering going on in his 1849 edition, when it is called the “second Leipzig edition.” So what is going on?

The veil is lifted by Gregory, in the third volume of the editio octava, p. 21:

There is actually a third volume to the eighth major edition, namely the Prolegomena (three volumes; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1884-1894; put together by Gregory), from which the citation above is taken.

So there you have it, but the confusion does not end here. Reuss for instance numbers differently, knowingly going against Tischendorf’s own system (see Bibliotheca, pp. 254-262). 11841 and 31842 are his “Editio Tischendorfii prima”; 21842 (with minor editions also by Didot in 1842, 1847, 1851 and 1859) is the “Editio Tischendorfii latinizans”; 41849, 51850 and 61854 belong to the “Editio Tischendorfii secunda” (with the series mentioned by Gregory, as far as Reuss knew and incorporated them in 1872); 71859 (minor and maior) are the “Editio Tischendorfii tertia”. Tischendorf’s octava would thus have been Reuss’s fourth Tischendorf edition.